UHCL celebrates Women’s History Month through upcoming events

UHCL celebrates Women’s History Month in March with offices and student organizations hosting events to highlight societal progress for women and the progress still needing to be made.

The Office of Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (OSDEI) will be celebrating through a series of collaborations with other programs. These joint ventures include partnering with Student Life’s Film and Speaker Series for the rescreening of “RBG,” a movie based on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s rise to the Supreme Court, on March 9. OSDEI will also collaborate with Film and Speaker to screen “On the Basis of Sex,” in which Ginsberg also plays a central role, on March 30. Both films will be followed by panel discussions.

For Joshua Quinn, coordinator of women, gender, and sexuality programs in OSDEI, these collaborations signify the need to involve more departments in promoting diversity and inclusivity.

“Diversity can’t just be promoted by our office,” Quinn said. “We need more offices to be involved in order to effectively inform our students that we foster an inclusive environment for everyone.”

OSDEI will have its own activities for Women’s History Month as well. The office will host “Woke Women in Music,” a music trivia event that will be centered around women of color who have used their platform to address women’s issues. They will also be doing a board decoration for Women’s History Month and some small craft activities leading up to the screening of “RBG” that will include coloring books.

The student organization Empower: Women’s Leadership is also promoting Women’s History Month by hosting its HerStory Slam on March 7. In this event, female-identifying individuals in the community are invited to share their personal experiences. The event will end with a 30-minute open mic session and the event is open to everyone.

This marks the second time Empower has hosted HerStory; the first one was held last spring.

“We wanted to have an annual event that was meaningful and had impact,” said Danna Butcher, president of Empower.

Butcher said that attendance was very good last year and provided a strong sense of community.

“We want to foster a sense of community and we also believe it is good to share stories because women are a diverse group,” Butcher said. “We want to establish a sense of togetherness.”

These programs are designed to educate students about the current state of societal views toward women. Quinn, who was motivated by the women in his own life to become an advocate, points out that while there is still much to be done, there are great strides that have been made for women.

“There is still a lot of work to do, but we have made a lot of progress,” Quinn said. “More women are serving in leadership roles, more of them are running for political offices and are even serving in political positions.”

Like Quinn, Butcher recognizes that while progress has been made, women still face many challenges. One particular hurdle that she points out is the continued expectation that women fulfill certain gender roles as opposed to just being viewed as an individual.

“I feel society has become more progressive in how it views women, but there’s still a lot of stereotypes society places on us in terms of our gender,” said Butcher. “We are moving forward but there is always pushback.”

Butcher adds that the study of women’s history is important because it continues the strive for more inclusion.

“Women should realize they are being leaders every day regardless of whether they are speaking up for something or just taking their kids to school,” Butcher said.